Vigilante movies are all the rage

It's really interesting to me to see so many A-list actors in flat out vigilante justice movies (as opposed to having those frankly B-movies populated by less stratospheric stars). Immediate examples are Kevin Bacon in Death Sentence and Jodie Foster in The Brave One (the weirdest movie title of the year so far). And what's with that trend anyway? What cultural phenomenon is at work here? Is it some kind of reaction to the Iraq war, or to concerns about domestic crime (though violent crime rates are down nationwide). Not sure where the urge for this particular theme is coming from.